Convent of the Capuchins (Las Capuchinas)
Antigua's best-preserved convent ruin, with a circular tower of cells and a museum of colonial art.
Las Capuchinas was the last and the largest of the female convents founded in Santiago de los Caballeros, the colonial capital now called Antigua Guatemala. Work began in 1731 to designs by Diego de Porres, the leading architect of the city, and the community of Capuchin nuns moved in during 1736. Thick, low walls, squat buttresses and small openings were an answer to repeated earthquakes, and much of the complex survived the disaster of 1773 that emptied the city.
Its most unusual structure is the Torre del Retiro, a circular two-storey block in which eighteen small cells, each with its own washroom, open off a central courtyard; beneath it lies a vaulted chamber with remarkable acoustics. Cloisters, a bathing pool, kitchens and the ruined church can all be walked through. Since 2009 the ground floor has housed the Museo de Capuchinas, showing some eighty pieces of colonial and archaeological art.
Highlights
- Torre del Retiro: a circular building of eighteen nuns' cells
- Vaulted basement chamber below the tower with unusual acoustics
- Earthquake-resistant cloisters, bathing pool and ruined church
- Museo de Capuchinas, with about eighty colonial and archaeological works
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